For those of you newly arrived, I decided this morning to just use this prologue day to speak about some basics of practice and emphasize that when The basics of practice are practiced thoroughly. They open up into the whole of teaching. Yes, so maybe the second aspect I can speak about is the idea, the custom of counting our breaths. So why bother to count your breaths?

[01:01]

Do you really need to know how many breaths you have? But then you lose count at ten, so you don't know how many breaths you have. Or most of us lose count at one or two. And we can call that the practice of counting to one. One. One. You didn't translate that. No, no, no. Okay. But after a while, it's possible to...

[02:07]

Count to ten quite easily. And you're doing two things, really. You're bringing your attention to your breath, which is bringing your attention to your body. And so you have an intention to bring your attention to your breath. And you're beginning a process of weaving mind and body together. Sewing perhaps with the needle and thread of the breath, mind and body together. You're also bringing your thinking into the rhythm or pace of the body.

[03:19]

And as a result, you begin thinking more, feeling your thinking in your body. And this is one of the manifestations of... of the practice of counting your breaths. And in many, many ways, the secrets of practice are contained or entered through the door of breath and body. You become more truthful. to yourself and to others, when your body is in your thinking.

[04:34]

As I point out, it's why lie detectors so often work. Because it's quite difficult for the body to lie. So the more your thinking is embodied thinking, which is almost always, I mean is always, I'm convinced, more creative and more stable thinking, You also don't lie to yourself. And we can call it the weaving together of mind and body.

[05:46]

Yeah, we can call it realizing a truth body. Yeah. So this is one of the, if you want to look at it in the context of the Eightfold Path, It's the entry, real entry into the practice of the Eightfold Path. Now, you're also learning by counting your breaths. You're also learning one-pointedness. And it's one of the main yogic skills. To be able to put your mind, your attention somewhere, and it stays there. This is closely related also to discoverings.

[06:53]

to entering into stillness. Because as long as your mind is jumping around, you can't be still. So can you rest your mind on stillness itself? Mind rested in stillness is one definition of samadhi. And mind rested in the enfoldedness of samadhi. which is a deeper definition of samadhi, mind which encompasses enfoldedness and doesn't have to unfold it. Again, going back to one-pointedness.

[08:13]

Yeah, it takes a while to learn the skill. And there are pretty clear stages of it you'll find that parallel the traditional teaching of how it develops. As you mind, your attention is on your breath. And then it goes off. And then it comes back. And then it goes off. Like that. But after a while, it gets easier to bring back to your accounting. Yeah, and that's the second stage. And then after a while, it comes back by itself. And that's the third stage. And then eventually, wherever you put your mind, it just stays there.

[09:44]

And this is somehow very relaxing. It's like I put the non-entity of this bell down stays there. It's got no place to go. It's got nothing to do. We can imagine it's quite happy. And the mind is like that. You put your mind somewhere And it's quite happy just to be there. Now you could say, oh, but my mind likes excitement. And while I'm driving, I have to listen to the radio. Or music at least.

[10:55]

And talk on the phone. Because, you know, I'm one of those ten track people. Multitasking at all times. And we can understand that's often, you know, definitely a kind of intelligence. But why does the mind need this distraction? It's not just that you're getting things done, it also needs the distraction. Well, of course, it's boring to have your mind just sitting there like a bell that's unrung. But of course it is also boring to have the ghost sitting there like a bell that is not rang.

[12:02]

But how does the world actually exist? It exists in movement and it exists in stillness. And the mind resting in stillness is also a mind which is gathering the world. The word stillness Interest in English. It means among, to be, est and inter. Inter is among and est is to be or being. So interest means to be at the center of being. And the word Paul Rosenblum likes, the Japanese word, I think it's kori, means this or just this.

[13:12]

But if you look at the character, the kanji, it actually means inside this. So we could understand then another way of defining samadhi. Samadhi is the mind that gathers the world into itself. And dharma means, of course you know, that which holds. And it's a very big question, why is there duration at all? If what I just said is in the past, as fast as I speak, it's disappearing into the... disappearing?

[14:14]

Anyway, it's past. And the future is... Why is there an experience of duration? What is the experience of duration? This is at the center of Buddhist practice. For how we exist, even if we're sitting at a desk or giving a talk or... you know, reading a book. What is this duration in my speaking entering into your duration? duration is enfolding the world just now.

[15:29]

If this is what's happening right now, it's certainly activity, but simultaneously it's also samadhi. If it gathers in. And as I said, the thingness of this bell, whatever it is, when I was a kid, I only knew bells that had little handles and you hit them and they went clink, clink, clink, you know. And if I was shown this, I would think it was a container for paperclips. And I said, well, geez, this paperclip holder has a nice sound. And I thought, oh, this container for... So the idea that it was a paper clip holder would gather.

[16:57]

So I think the word thing actually is rooted in an etymology of that which gathers. So this being a bell, you notice it, you have a number of perceptions, and you, oh, that looks like a bell now that you mention it. Or it couldn't be used as a bell. But then you have to have And you have to have someone to strike it. Because if I just put the striker there, it just stays there, it doesn't do anything.

[18:04]

So there has to be someone to pick it up. And then it also has to be someone who wants to hear it or wants to bring it. So here I'm speaking, of course, which I said I wasn't going to do, about entitylessness. Yeah, good. So, as I said to Eric earlier, a thing is an entity only when it knows it's not. Because we can take things as entities, but we're only taking them as entities. So that this is a bell gathers through the striker my intention to hit it and so forth.

[19:23]

So this knowing the world as the gathering of the world. And that's a technical definition of a Dharma. And it's a definition of what we mean by moment's gate or the gate of each moment. So we could say if we want to take this title, the gate of each moment, that we won't notice that each moment's a gate unless we have a mind that gathers the gate.

[20:29]

So that's the practice also, one-pointedness. Which is the main way to develop it is to... Discover and develop it is to count your breaths. I said I would talk about don't scratch, count your breaths. And don't invite your thoughts to tea. But now we do have to invite our guests to tea into their room and things like that. So we'll have to talk about not inviting our thoughts to tea, tonight or tomorrow or sometimes.

[21:49]

So let's gather the bell for a moment. and gather ourselves with the bell. So we could say zazen is sitting gathering or sitting absorption. I'm testing the translator. He seems to keep passing the test. More or less. The bell is

[22:57]

We could say gathering in the sound. Wir könnten sagen, die Glocke versammelt sich im Klang. In the sound gathering into your perception. Und wir können sagen, dass der Klang sich in eurer Wahrnehmung versammelt. And into your feelings. Und in eure Gefühle. Yeah, like that. Mm.

[24:36]

So dinner will be at six. Okay. And we start maybe at eight. Eight, that's what I heard. Eight? Is that what it says in the announcement? Is anybody in the announcement? I think it says we start at six. Dinner. Well, six to seven, seven to eight, I think is better. You think 7.30 is better, huh? I think eight is better. So it will be at eight, I have to go. Yeah. I have to print later. Well, you can start translating at 7.30 if you want. Okay. We'll see how skilled you can be. What is that?

[27:01]

Thank you.

[27:22]

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